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Comment by UnoriginalGuy | Hacker News Reader

Being overweight or the diet associated with being overweight? Particularly with recent research showing that the gap between periods of consumption can help the pancreas regenerate[0].

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines...

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That's an interesting question, but I guess I don't understand the point of the distinction? If you're just pointing it out, ya, I think that's an interesting question to consider. But for practical purposes i'm not sure there's a difference.

A diet full of starches and sugar, a diet of almost only fat and meat, and a diet of mostly the two combined could all lead to obesity. Are they equally likely to lead to diabetes? Is it obesity, or a correlation between obesity and drinking your own weight in Coke every week that is the highest risk factor?

With a sample of n=1 I have close family member who developed diabetes with a perfectly “healthy” diet, just out of control portion sizes. Since losing weight, they’re “cured”.

I would guess overweight in and of itself. Being overweight puts your body in a pro-inflammatory state; a pro-inflammatory state makes auto-immune (etc.) disease more likely. So would be surprised if they were not linked. One way to guage might be to take people are are overweight _but are not gaining weight_ -- and compare them to people who are gaining weight (regardless of current weight). Probably a hard study to do.

So is it that the high refined carb diet causes overweight which causes diabetes, or is it that the diet directly causes diabetes, and also directly causes overweight?

In either case, the smart thing would be to avoid the high refined carb diet.

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